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Topic: Florestan´s Romantic Salon (Read 22658 times)

My intention in starting this thread is to create a genial meeting place for all those interested in discussing all things Romantic. The main focus is of course music, but in keeping with a genuine Romantic spirit, talking about, and commenting on, literature, visual arts and philosophy is welcome and encouraged. As long as there is a connection to Romanticism, there is no offtopic here.

So, you are all warmly invited to join in and bring your love (or lack thereof) and knowledge of, and perspective about, Romantic music (and Romanticism in general). Whether a particular composer or recording, an interesting book or article on the subject, or simply your own ideas and thoughts, feel free to express yourself in complete liberty: people who dislike, or even hate, Romanticism are most welcome too, there is always something interesting to learn from the opposition, and we might even be able to make a few converts.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,Florestan

I´ll start right off by recommending you this article, which is quite illuminating about what (mainly German) Romanticism was all about and is accompanied by some very nice musical examples which allow anyone to build his own concert using whatever recordings of the musical material they want.

Josef Danhauser: Franz Liszt playing in a Parisian salon a grand piano by Conrad Graf , who commissioned the painting; on the piano is a bust of Beethoven by Anton Dietrich; the imagined gathering shows seated Alexandre Dumas (père), George Sand, Franz Liszt, Marie d'Agoult; standing Hector Berlioz or Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini; a portrait of Byron on the wall and a statue of Joan of Arc on the far left.

I myself am not very much of the romantic persuasion , but will be delighted to visit (if the uncoverted are welcome, of course ) whenever I have anything interesting to comment (or, more probably, to ask)...

Nightly from my narrow chamber driven,Come I to fulfil my destin'd part,Him to seek to whom my troth was given,And to draw the life-blood from his heart.He hath served my will;More I yet must kill,For another prey I now depart.

I myself am not very much of the romantic persuasion , but will be delighted to visit (if the uncoverted are welcome, of course ) whenever I have anything interesting to comment (or, more probably, to ask)...

Nightly from my narrow chamber driven,Come I to fulfil my destin'd part,Him to seek to whom my troth was given,And to draw the life-blood from his heart.He hath served my will;More I yet must kill,For another prey I now depart.

Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

An excellent examination of how the artists became wrapped up in the politics of that century.

Cato - boy, that book looks familiar but not found in my collection (not unexpected, wife and I donate our books to local charities on an annual basis, so may have been a read before and given away?) - but I see that Andrei has already asked for some comments - thanks. Dave

I have indeed, and found it very good indeed. It's been several years, though.

I have the first four volumes of Stefan Irmer´s cycle on MDG and the complete 8-volume Paolo Giacometti cycle on Channel Classics (too many covers to post). The latter has better sonics and uses a splendid-sounding 1849 Erard. It got a 10/10 rave review by Hurwitz himself.

The author, one Elizabeth Green, makes an interesting case for AFTY being inspired by, and modeled after, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Give it a read --- whether you agree or not, it is a good opportunity to visit / revisit one of Schumann's most charming piano cycles. There is no dearth of good recordings: Samuil Feinberg, Carlo Zecchi, Rene Gianoli, Francoise Thinat, Alexis Weissenberg, Joerg Demus, Joseph Nagy, Michael Endres, Luba Edlina... Actually, AFTY seems to be more popular with pianists than with the audience.

Cato - boy, that book looks familiar but not found in my collection (not unexpected, wife and I donate our books to local charities on an annual basis, so may have been a read before and given away?) - but I see that Andrei has already asked for some comments - thanks. Dave

Holy Madness is a tour de force: beginning with the American Revolution and ending with the Franco-Prussian War, the author shows how the concepts of Romanticism galloped across Europe, although the last chapter shows the lingering of Romanticism (as a spiritual-political force) into the 20th century. Composers do not figure as much as writers, e.g. Goethe gets more print than Wagner, Rousseau more than Berlioz, and there is no mention of Beethoven, which lack I find inexplicable.

And yet it is an almost cinematic description of large and small players in revolutionary Europe - from Portugal to Poland and even Russia (e.g. Bakunin and Dostoyevsky are discussed).

An example from the concluding chapter: after discussing Hitler's (mad?) order that Nazis be sent into Italy to find ancient copies of the Germania by Tacitus (which was rather laudatory toward the ancient Germanic tribes) even in 1944, Zamoyski writes:

Quote

What these regimes did was to carry to their logical extremity Rousseau's ideas on the need to replace God in the workings of human society with something else that would motivate people in the desired direction. But regimes which applied the ideas of Rousseau somehow always seemed to inherit along with them something of the obsessive self-pitying paranoia of the man himself, and usually ended up destroying themselves through their own instruments of control and repression...

(referring to Lafayette and his peers who still believed in God in some way)...These were no mere rebels; they aspired to emulate Christ by immolating themselves for the sake of humanity....The wars and revolutions they started or embraced were acts of faith...

Logged

COWBOY (sitting down to a poker game for the first time): "Is this a game of chance?!"

- W. C. FIELDS (as Cuthbert Twillie): "Uhh, not the way I play it, no." in My Little Chickadee.

Holy Madness is a tour de force: beginning with the American Revolution and ending with the Franco-Prussian War, the author shows how the concepts of Romanticism galloped across Europe, although the last chapter shows the lingering of Romanticism (as a spiritual-political force) into the 20th century. Composers do not figure as much as writers,.............

Thanks Cato for the excellent comments - available to read for free w/ my Amazon Prime or just a $4 purchase - Dave

The author, one Elizabeth Green, makes an interesting case for AFTY being inspired by, and modeled after, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Give it a read --- whether you agree or not, it is a good opportunity to visit / revisit one of Schumann's most charming piano cycles. There is no dearth of good recordings: Samuil Feinberg, Carlo Zecchi, Rene Gianoli, Francoise Thinat, Alexis Weissenberg, Joerg Demus, Joseph Nagy, Michael Endres, Luba Edlina... Actually, AFTY seems to be more popular with pianists than with the audience.

Can someone confirm or deny that Album for the Young cannot have been intended for youngsters because most of the pieces are too difficult? It's one of Green's "arguments."

Can someone confirm or deny that Album for the Young cannot have been intended for youngsters because most of the pieces are too difficult? It's one of Green's "arguments."

According to Wikipedia:

Album for the Young (Album für die Jugend), Op. 68, was composed by Robert Schumann in 1848 for his three daughters. The album consists of a collection of 43 short works. Unlike the Kinderszenen, they are suitable to be played by children or beginners. The second part, starting at Nr. 19 (Kleine Romanze), is marked Für Erwachsenere (For adults; For more grown-up ones) and contains more demanding pieces.

Anyway, apart from the mere technical argument it is the suggested symbolism and overall structuring of the cycle as a unified whole that I find if not convincing then at least plausible.